It is known that productively active persons enter the social and political spheres. It should be shown through practical approaches that there exists an association between a social and political structure with production. These approaches must be devoid of any disorientation and guesses. The society’s social organization and state are constantly changing from the basic processes in actuality: the change occurs on their operation methods and production processes. This results in them working within certain constraints and presuppositions free of their will.
The creation of thoughts, notions and consciousness are initially intertwined with the material activity of human beings. This is indeed the language of real life. Creation of ideas and intellectual ability begin to be seen at this phase as the direct product of their material conduct. This argument can also be applied to mental development as evident in the sphere of politics, law, religion, physics and so on.
All of these conceptions, ideas and thoughts originate from human beings, christened real active men. The men are acclimatized by an assured growth of their productive abilities and of the interactions resulting from these factors. Insight can never imply anything else other than existence, and the existence of human beings in their right frame of mind and body. If in all philosophy, human beings are their situations are not upright as they ought to be, this could have some basis similar to their ancient life-processes.
Marx’s understanding of human nature is based on the assumption that people are species beings. According to the Marxist theory, a man proves that he is a “conscious species-being” through the creation of “a world of objects by his personal activity” ((Wharton, 2015, p. 7). In other words, an individual treats other species “as his object” and “treats himself as the actual, living species,” which are universal and unconstrained (Wharton, 2015, p. 6). From this, it could be inferred that the critical idea of Marx’s view on man’s essence is that people express their human nature via creating products. Marx’s theory of alienation contradicts the concept of scientific management because the latter deprives workers of control over the working process and makes them not independent actors but means to achieve the end of employees.
Regarding Hochschild’s philosophy, it is essential to define the concept of emotional work. Emotion work takes place when people regulate their emotions to achieve specific personal benefits or goals. The idea of emotional work should not be confused with the concept of emotional labor, which implies the “management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (Wharton, 2015, p. 31). Emotion work is not compensated, whereas emotional labor could be performed in exchange for a wage, meaning that emotions could be managed to satisfy an employer’s expectations (Wharton, 2015). Hochschild argues that the management of emotions in exchange for a wage leads to the “transmutation” of private life into a social one (Wharton, 2015, p. 34). Scientific management presupposes that employees should act in a way that is expected by the managerial personnel. Hence, they should manage their emotions and commit emotional labor that would lead to emotional and physical exhaustion, absenteeism, and a work-family conflict in the long-term perspective.
From my perspective, scientific management is essential for the efficient operation of any business. Although it is impossible to deny the validity of the arguments proposed by Marx and Hochschild, it is still true that an employer’s prosperity could not be achieved if his or her employees are working in unsuitable conditions for low wages. Besides, it is impossible to cancel all management in a firm because it would not operate otherwise. Therefore, even though I agree that under a scientific management approach, employees are treated as means of achieving the ends of employers, appropriate policies undertaken by a manager would prevent the destructive consequences of emotional labor proposed by Hochschild.
Reference
Wharton, A. S. (2015). Working in America: Continuity, conflict, and change in a new economic era. Routledge.
Plato believed that human self has two constituent parts: the intellectual soul, which hankers for knowledge and enlightenment and the beast, which is driven only by the desire. According to him, our task is to hold this beast in leash. The soul (mind) must always prevail upon the beast (body). To some extent, his beliefs remind Buddhist philosophy, arguing that the source of our sufferings is the desire. Platos theory finds reflection in works of many other philosophers (Plato, p. 122). Platos pupil, Aristotle modified his theory. According to him, a human being is the combination of three animals (conjugal, political, and mimetic). The conjugal animal is the part of a human being, which hankers for coupling. The “political animal” represents the desire of a human being to form communities. As regards, the “mimetic animal” Plato means that we are inclined to imitate and create. Aristotle explored this issue mostly within the context of political science(Aristotle, 300). If we speak about Platos approach we have to answer the question, how it is possible to conquer this “beast” in other words desire. Aristotles theory seems to be very prudent, but what are the relationships between these parts of “human self”
Rene Descartes was convinced that “human self” has dual nature, mind, and body. To a certain degree, it reminds Platos point of view. In his opinion, these are two separate notions. Soul (mind) is immortal, whereas body is temporal. It stands to reasons that body is subservient to mind which embodies intellect, intelligence, reason, whereas body mostly represents emotion (Descartes, p. 55). Descartes believed that a human being must conquer emotions. However, some controversy arises in connection with this idea, for example, should we really set aside our emotions, because they actually make us alive.
Hume viewed human being as a creature that trying to keep balance between different elements such as reason and desire. He also explored this issue as the conflict of mind and body. Mind represents reason whereas body represents desire. Although, his views are reminiscent of those ones of Plato, Hume believed that it is necessary to attain equilibrium between these two parts of human self (Hume, p. 211). The philosophical dilemma is how to do it, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, a human being is driven by the desire.
Karl Marx did not pay extra attention to the conflict of mind and body. He believed that a human being is a blank sleet (tabula rasa), therefore the behavior of a human being entirely depends on his social experience. The essence of his theory boils down to the idea that a better society will be able to produce better people (Wheen, p. 54).
Jean-Paul Sartre thought that a human self has three peculiar features, individual freedom, individual existence, and choice. In his opinion, the society (any society) suppresses our individuality; therefore making us to conform In addition to that, Sartre was convinced that a human existence does not have to be purposeful (Sartre, p. 69).
Among these philosophers, I would like to single out Plato and his views as to the human nature. The conflict between body (we may also call it beast or desire) seems me the most crucial in our life. Now we live in the society, when a human being is driven by his desire. This issue is explored in the film “Fight Club” It mostly focuses on consumerism, which certainly originates from desire. It seems to me that Platos ideas are very palpable in the movie.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Aristotle, Harold Percy Cooke, Longinus, Demetrius. “Aristotle: In Twenty- three Volumes” Harvard University Press, 2000
David Hume, Ernest Campbell Mossner. “A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Mor”. Penguin Classics, 1986.
Jean-Paul Sartre. “Critique of Dialectical Reason” Verso, 2004.
Francis Wheen. “Karl Marx: A Life” W W Norton & Co Inc, 2001.
Plato, Benjamin Jowett. “The Republic” Plain Label Books, 1996.
René Descartes, John Cottingham, Bernard Williams. “Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies”. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
The Prussian philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a profound influence on the thinkers and philosopher of the early 19th century. Hegel had complex and abstract ideas about various issues in philosophy, which were open to different interpretations.
As a young intellectual in Berlin, Marx was initially a Kantian like his father, and was opposed to the ideas of Hegel which were more in fashion in that period. After a brief period of resistance to Hegelian ideas, Marx became a member of a coterie of young radicals who have been variously called the ‘Left Hegelians’ or ‘Young Hegelians’ (Seigal 1973).
Hegel had espoused the theory that history was progressive in nature. According to Hegel’s belief human society had gone through different stages of progress for the purpose of reaching its final and most advanced stage. Hegel held to the nationalistic belief that this highest stage in mankind’s development was represented by the Prussian state of his time (Ruhle 2005).
After Hegel’s death, his followers split into two main groups; the ‘Young’ and the ‘Old’ Hegelians. The ‘Old Hegelians’ accepted Hegel’s controversial assertion that the Prussian state embodied the culmination of all human progress, they also accepted the idea that Hegel’s philosophy was in continuity with Christian theology (McLellan 1980).
The ‘Young Hegelians’ on the other hand, while agreeing with much of Hegel’s ideas and his philosophical methodology, rejected the belief that human history had progressed to its apogee in the 19th century Prussia. According to the Young Hegelians there was still a long way to go before mankind could reach its peak; they also were of the view that Christianity was essentially incompatible with Hegel’s philosophy (Bernstein 1971).
The Young Hegelians agreed that rational philosophy was superior to religion in understanding history. Some Hegelians, such as Strauss had a more charitable view of religion in this matter. Strauss believed that Christianity still contained elements of value to a philosopher.
He believed that once Christianity had been stripped of its dogmatic and ritualistic elements, philosophy could be used to reveal hidden essential truths about the nature of being. Most Young Hegelians were opposed to this idea and held that religion contained no objective truths and the central element of religion lay in human emotions (McLellan 1980).
Central to the Young Hegelian’s beliefs was the idea that religion was one of the biggest factors that prevented human civilization from progressing. Many of the Young Hegelians were atheists from a Jewish background and possessed a visceral aversion to Christianity and the Christian civilization, which they inherited from their ethno-religious background as well as contempt for their own religious traditions. Many of the writings of the Young Hegelians focused on the refutation of religion and need to replace religion with philosophy as the moral criterion for the society and means for understanding history (Carlebach 1978).
Among the Young Hegelians, there were many different ideas about how to go about replacing Christianity, the dominant religion of Europe, with philosophy. Bruno Bauer, one of Marx’s teachers, presented the view that Jesus was not a historical person and they story of his life was a fabricated myth.
Other Young Hegelians were more subtle in their refutations of Christianity, Feuerbach expressed the idea that Christianity was merely the result of various aspects of a human psyche, for example humans fear death and Christianity teaches the existence of an eternal soul and bodily resurrection that serves to reassure its followers that they will not die (Ruhle 2005).
Many of the Young Hegelians held on to Hegel’s belief that a human’s knowledge is limited by their subjective experiences and their perception of reality is created by their minds. In accordance with this view they believed that the liberation of the human self from religious doctrines would bring in an era of progress (Bernstein 1971).
Marx’s break with the Young Hegelians occurred around 1844. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx charged that Feuerbach had not completely broken free from the idea that it is the mind which creates the environment. Marx asserted that the social order was the product of the relationship between the different social and environmental forces and religion and other ideologies were merely the product of human practices and not their cause (Ruhle 2005).
Marx maintained that true change could only come after human practices were changed. According to Marx, Hegelian philosophers separate thinking from activity, according to his view once philosophy is removed from practical action, it no longer represents anything real. Marx says: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (McLellan 1980).
According to Marx there was no real difference between the Young and the Old Hegelians as both of them accepted that ideas proceeded actions.
The Old Hegelians believed that ideas and beliefs constituted reality itself, i.e. it is a fiction to speak of objective reality as separate from ideological thinking, and the Young Hegelians on the other hand believed that ideas formed constraints and limits upon progress in the real world. Marx says that human ideas neither form the reality and nor can they constitute real limits on reality, since ideas themselves are products of the reality, a change in the reality can however bring about changes in ideas (Marx 1973).
The Young Hegelians also sought to bring social change in the society. They believed that they could bring about social change by effecting a change in thinking. They saw religion as the crucial ideology which prevented social change from occurring and concentrated their energies into removing religion from society (Ruhle 2005).
In contrast to the Young Hegelians Marx believed that religious or political ideologies were created by the ruling classes in order to safeguard their rule. He believed that the chief purpose of these ideologies is to portray the interests of the ruling class as the common interest of the whole society (Ruhle 2005).
According to Marx, the ruling class does not possess the power to perpetuate this fiction forever on their own strength, for the perpetuation of this fiction the economic forces which give rise to the ruling class must be maintained effectively. Marx believed that the key to social change depended upon changing the underlying unjust economic order of the society (Marx and Engels 1970).
Marx believed that once the unjust economic order was replaced by a just system, the religious and political ideologies that came about as a result of the unjust order would be destroyed as well. In the preface to his work, ‘The German Ideology’, he mocked those who attempted social change through attacks on religion, saying:
“Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water.
His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany (Marx & Engels 1970).”
Marx believed that a change in human economic relationships is necessary for social change. He gave the example of the removal of feudalism with capitalism as a social change brought about through economic change. Marx believed that this change occurred because people came up with new methods for production of goods and their distribution and created new ways of transportation and communication. These new methods were more productive than the old ones and thus were adopted and brought about a social change.
According to Marx, the adoption of these new methods allowed the introduction of a new social order. Instead of the old order where the feudal lords controlled everyone through violence, a new order was formed having two components; the bourgeois who own the means of production and the proletariat who have only their labor to sell.
Marx believed that since the actions of Capitalist societies leads to the organization of labor and led to the rise of consciousness among the lower classes, this paved the way for a socialist revolution wherein the proletariat would take over the means of production and social inequalities would be removed since the people who worked the factories etc. would be the ones who owned them.
A practical aspect of Marx’s dispute with the Young Hegelians can be seen in how they proposed to solve the “Jewish Question” i.e. the problems resulting from the minority religious status of Jews in a Christian Europe. Bruno Bauer and other Young Hegelians touted the end of religion as the solution to the problem of Jewish dissimilarity to Christians (Carlebach 1978).
In his work ‘The Jewish Question’ subtitled ‘The Capacity of Today’s Jews and Christians to Become Free’ Bruno asserts that once both Jews and Christians have renounced their respective religions there would remain no basis for the persecution of Jews and mutual enmity between Christians and Jews (Carlebach 1978).
Marx counters this idea in his work ‘On the Jewish Question’, asserting that it is unreasonable to suppose that a capitalistic society could get rid of religion. Marx argues that religions continue to survive in secular capitalist states and that such states are not, in their essence opposed to religion, rather they are designed to accommodate many different religions, instead of just one (Carlebach 1978).
Marx argued that the end of religion would not necessitate the end of Jewish people and the specific isolated nature of the Jewish community could be maintained without the doctrines and rituals of Judaism. According to Marx’s understanding Judaism was an economic outlook based on the acquisition of material wealth on which the trappings of religious doctrines and rituals had be laid in other to justify it (Carlebach 1978).
Another aspect of Marx’s dispute with Young Hegelians can be seen in his refutation of Max Stirner’s egoist philosophy as explicated in his book,’ The Ego and Its Own’. Marx devoted a large part of ‘The German Ideology’ to a refutation of Stirner’s ideas (Lobkowicz 1969).
Marx treats Stirner’s ideas in a very hostile and sarcastic manner, even while agreeing with much of what he has written. Marx acknowledges that the present economic system was unjust and had no way to deal with the problem of poverty. He also shares Stirner’s contempt for appeals to people’s consciousness i.e. asking people to donate to charity, as a means of dealing with social inequalities (Lobkowicz 1969).
Marx’s main dispute with Stirner lies in the latter’s egoism. Stirner says that humans should reject religion, nationalism, family etc. and fulfill their own egos. Marx counters this view, asserting that just as religion, nationalism, family etc. are abstract concepts, so it the idea of an ‘ego’.
Marx asserts that a human’s ego is itself a product of the different forces in the social system of a society such as the family, the society and the nation. Marx asserts that instead of having philosophies based on subjective concepts like ego, they should be based instead on the objective realities of human activities and the material conditions of a society (Lobkowicz 1969).
It is apparent that the Hegel’s ideas of historical progression and the Young Hegelian’s refutations of religion and other ideologies were a major factor in the formation of Marx’s own ideology.
However while Hegel and the Hegelians were concerned about making ideological warfare and defeating the ideas that they believed were responsible for perpetuating injustice, Marx offered the insight that human economic relationships were the forces which created these ideologies and that the destruction of these ideologies could not be accomplished without destroying the underlying economic order.
While Marx agreed with the aims and purposes of the Young Hegelians, he sought to remove the subjectivity of their ideas by basing his own philosophy on an economic basis.
List of References
Bernstein, R.J., 1971. Praxis and action: Contemporary philosophies of human activity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Carlebach, J., 1978. Karl Marx and the radical critique of Judaism. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lobkowicz, N., 1969. Karl Marx and Max Stirner. In F.J. Adelmann, ed. Demythologizing Marxism: a series of studies on Marxism. Boston, MA: Springer. pp.64-95.
Marx, K., 1973. The Holy Family. Translated by R. Dixon & C. Dutts. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Marx, K. & Engels, F., 1970. The German ideology. Translated by C.J. Arthur. New York, NY: International Publishers Co.
McLellan, D., 1980. Marx Before Marxism. London: Macmillan.
Ruhle, O., 2005. Karl Marx: His Life and Work. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing.
Seigal, J.E., 1973. Marx’s Early Development: Vocation, Rebellion, and Realism. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 3(3), pp.475-508.
There is hardly a person who never wished to see historical figures with his/her own eyes, to discuss their works and achievements with them personally, and to spend time sharing impressions about their studies. Sometimes it seems that it would be great for some of those figures to visit the countries they have never been to. It would be honorable and extremely interesting to take Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Robert Owen to such countries as America, Albania, and Cuba; they can further discuss the impressions about their trips as well as other issues with one of the modern politicians, Paul Volcker.
Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher, would benefit greatly from the trip to America. Smith was a philosopher but he was also interested in other subjects apart from philosophy. He used to pay special attention to history.
He was deeply conscious of the history he was living in; it is probable that he saw the human species as immersed in history at all moments of its existence; and it is certain that he contributed to the development of historical thought in new directions and the acquisition of new meanings by the term “history”. (Haakonssen 270)
America is a highly developed country which, like no other country, is able to demonstrate all of the modern achievements of humanity. Adam Smith would be glad to observe how much the world has changed since the 18th century. The best place for Smith to visit would be New York, the city which experienced a great number of changes over the past decades. Smith, a pioneer of political economy, would be interested in analyzing the current economic situation in the country and, perhaps, even suggest ways for the country to overcome the economic crisis. I believe that Smith should be taken to America because throughout his life he traveled mostly around Europe, and it would be interesting for him to compare Europe and America from the point of view of moral philosopher.
Karl Marx, social scientist and philosopher of the 19th century, will find it interesting to visit Albania, one of the smallest countries in Europe. As a historian, he would be interested in visiting numerous historical museums, as well as museums of natural history and national culture which belong to the greatest sites of Albania. Karl Marx spent most of his life in Germany and France; this is why Albania, which differs from those countries in culture, politics, and other aspects, is likely to appeal to Marx. As an independent thinker, Marx could forecast further development of the country and give some advices on how the country could use tourism for its development; this advice of his would be quite valuable because Marx was a person who could unite history and philosophy; he could work out a proper solution basing on the analysis of Albania’s history and using both its strengths and weaknesses for ensuring proper development of the country. His advice could be relied upon, for “Marx was someone whose intellectual achievements in economics, history, and social theory … resulted simply from following the empirical evidence, and the paths of independent thinking and theoretical construction.” (Wood xi) Karl Marx should be taken to Albania because this country has not been yet strongly affected by globalization; the philosopher will not be astonished at enormous skyscrapers or extremely lively traffic, which cannot be found in Albania. A tour around Albania will explore the heritage of this country and find out about its culture which was strongly influenced by Turks, Greeks, and Romans.
Robert Owen would probably change most of his ideologies after visiting Cuba. Owen’s cherished dream was to create a utopian community which would be able to lead to an international social reform. “Influenced by radical Enlightenment rationalism, Owen opposed revealed religion and espoused a conviction that human character is, without exception formed by one’s environment” (Foster and Dunnavant 143); he kept to the idea that social reform could be implemented if this environment could be controlled. If Owen was able to visit Cuba these days and to learn more about this country, he would refuse from his ideas of creating a utopian community. Creation of the perfect world and equality is unnecessary, since in the present community the countries which are more developed offer help to those which are not. Thus, Cuba regularly gets humanitarian help from its neighbor, the United States, the country which often offers assistance to the Third World Countries. Owen would realize that Utopia is unnecessary for the community seeking mutual help and understanding. Moreover, Cuba has a number of sites to visit. Robert Owen would eventually abandon his utopian ideas after seeing how much the country achieved without having a perfect community. Old Havana is a place he should surely visit, for its buildings, music, food, and especially people make it the most unique place in the world. After visiting Cuba, Owen will admit that people do not need any social reforms and a utopian community to live in harmony and to be satisfied with what one has achieved.
These three philosophers could have a lively discussion of different issues during the dinner with Paul Volcker, an American economist and a chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Since Volcker and Smith are both economists, they could discuss the ways to improve the economy of the United States. The value of this discussion lies in the fact that Smith could evaluate the economic situation in the country objectively and basing on his own knowledge about the economy. Going to basics proves to be beneficial in a number of situations; perhaps, Smith’s fresh take on things could throw the light on what modern economists do not notice. Robert Owen could offer once again the idea of the utopian community which Volcker would definitely oppose. They could wrangle over this issue with Volcker’s proving to Owen why utopian ideas are unacceptable in the modern world. Finally, Karl Marx could use his independent thinking and adjudicate the dispute, expressing his own opinion about the utopian community. This issue is unusual for Marx who believed only in empirical evidence this is why the conversation will be extremely interesting for him.
In sum, Adam Smith’s, Karl Marx’s, and Robert Owen’s visit to America, Albania, and Cuba could greatly impress them and even influence the ideologies they kept to throughout their lives. Their dining with a contemporary politician Paul Volcker would be useful for each of them, resulting in philosophers’ changing their ideas about certain issues and Volcker getting an advice from people who are considered to be the greatest thinkers of the past. The philosophers’ advice to help the US improve its current economic situation could be valuable and could be used by Volcker for the benefit of the country.
Works Cited
Foster, Douglas A. and Dunnavant, Anthony L. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Churches of Christ. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004.
Haakonssen, Knud. The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Great philosophical thinkers like Rene Descartes and Karl Marx made significant contributions to the modern knowledge, especially philosophy. The massive philosophical Knowledge we have today is based on theories and hypotheses derived from some of their great works. Rene Descartes was a seventeenth century French Philosopher and a scientist who did not only contribute to philosophy but also mathematics and physics. He is the father of modern philosophy because of his significant contribution in the field of philosophy.
Karl Marx was a nineteenth century German philosopher and a social scientist who contributed greatly to the modern social science. Although their great works are credible, they received immense criticism during the course of history. I have seen that Rene Descartes contribution in philosophy and natural science stood the test of time; therefore, he became a hero’ on the other hand, Karl Marx’s contribution in social science did not stand the test of time. Hence, he became an anti-hero.
Comparison
Both Rene Descartes and Karl Marx employed their philosophical knowledge in formulating their theories. They used their philosophical knowledge to solve the problems they encountered during their times. Rene Descartes in his time as a scientist, as well a philosopher, developed mathematical formulae and proved the existence of God using metaphysics approach. “In his metaphysics, he provided an argument for the existence of God” (Rodis-Lewis, 1999, p.102).
I have understood that anything that is doubted is real because matter and reality are inseparable; therefore, if I doubt the existence of God, then He exists. On the other hand, Karl Marx directed his philosophical knowledge in exploring politics and economics. According to Megill, “fundamentally, Marx assumed that human nature involves transforming material nature” (2002, p. 223). Ian perceive that he passionately believed in materialism because he formulated an economic ideology of Marxism that led to communism revolution.
Another similarity of Rene Descartes and Karl Marx is their family background. Their fathers were both lawyers, and I think they received similar upbringing that molded their lives to become great philosophers. Also in terms of religion, both were Christians, athe lthough they received criticisms that they had incorporated atheistic beliefs into their philosophical theories. I believe that these criticisms are true for “Descartes entered the newly founded Jesuit College of La Fleche” (Rodis-Lewis, 1999, p. 304).
He learned under Jesuits’ curriculum and it’s worth noting that Jesuits are an atheistic secret society and they must have influenced his Christian beliefs.
Blaise Pascal further accused, him by saying that, “I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God, but Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God” (Rodis-Lewis, 1999, p. 162). Although he was a professed Christian, his philosophical beliefs in meditation were associated with atheistic beliefs.
Likewise, Karl Marx was influenced by Hegel’s atheistic beliefs as “they made use of Hegel’s dialectical method as a powerful weapon for the critique of established politics and religion” (Megill, 2002, p.180). In the socialism and communism revolution, Hegelian tactics were used to mobilize workers to wage war against capitalism. I think these philosophers harbored both Christian and atheistic beliefs, for the atheists used them to propagate their ideologies in shaping society.
Contrast
I can read from their historical background that Rene Descartes and Karl Marx were not contemporary philosophers as they lived a century a part. This historical difference led them to differ in their philosophical ideologies and perception of life. Rene Descartes focused his philosophical knowledge towards physics and mathematical discoveries. Modern mathematics like calculus, analytical geometry, Cartesian coordinate system, laws of reflection and momentum originated from him.
His works still form the basis of current scientific inventions and applications. “Descartes’ theory provided the basis for the calculus of Newton and Leibniz by applying infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics” (Gullberg, 1997, p. 4). Descartes left enormous scientific legacy that I still apply today and thus he passes for a philosophical hero.
Karl Marx focused his philosophical knowledge of economic and social science. Using historical experiences, he described the society history saying that, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Megill, 2002, p. 50).
I understand that he wanted to eliminate economic system of capitalism and replace it with communism for he argued that, “capitalism like previous socioeconomic systems, would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its destruction” (Baird, 2008, p. 89). With this perception on capitalism, he formulated the ideology of communism that later become Marxism.
After his death, the ideology of Marxism intensified workers’ movement as a way to weaken capitalism but it failed. Karl Marx passes for an anti-hero because “…he did not hold to the materialistic conception of history thinking that it had adequate justification but held it because the circumstances were consistent with his deepest philosophical commitments” (Megill, 2002, p. 337). His ideologies of socialism, communism, and Marxism did not stand the test of time hence making him an anti-hero.
Conclusion
I concur that Rene Descartes and Karl Marx were both great philosophers who made a great contribution to society during their time and by extension, up to this modern world. My analysis shows that their differences result from the impact of their ideologies on the current society and as to whether they did stand the test of time. What we can learn from the philosophers is that moral character determines moral decision in choosing and formulating philosophical ideologies, which will have a lasting benefit to humanity.
References
Baird, F. (2008). From Plato to Derrida: Upper Saddle River. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Gullberg, J. (1997). Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Megill, A. (2002). Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Rodis-Lewis, G. (1999). Descartes: His Life and Thought. New York: Cornell University Press.
A continuous struggle is going on in the world of Karl Marx, for as long as there is an exploiter and an exploited. Karl Marx lived and struggled all his life for the emancipation of the working man who was reduced to a common serf. There is continuing class struggle as people with the same interests form a class to fight for their freedom.
Class struggles exist in any given society when its production powers are falling. This is what happened to the cities of Europe during Marx and Engel’s time. By contrast, primitive societies have no class because their labour tends to be similar and all members of society work hard for their daily subsistence. Unlike in a class society where there is difference between labour and capital; one has to work while the other produces the capital. Here, class struggle is evident. (Wood 2004, p. 97)
Commentators and Marxist critics do not have only one interpretation of the term class struggle. Many would say that it is about material struggle of the classes in society. Others would say that it is used as a metaphor. In the true sense, it is economic in nature. But it is material because it is a struggle for the material means that members of society desperately need. The social order depends upon the results of class struggle, or there cannot be order if class struggle causes social upheaval or conflict or chaos.
In the Marxist philosophy, class struggle means battle of opposing classes. There have been class divisions in society based on the relation of individuals to property and means of production. Because of these class struggles, changes are inevitable. (Chatterjee 2010, p. 24)
Marx believed that world history has been characterized by class struggle. Class struggles are the result of economic development or of society’s forces of production. Tools, technologies and industries are the driving forces in history’s class struggles. These forces can change human relations. (Lowi and Harpham 1997, p. 255)
What are classes? Classes are ‘economic groupings’ in society that depends on their relation to the production process. The moneyed class or the capitalists, those who own the means of production are grouped into one class, while the labourers and the proletariat belong to another; they are also known as the exploiting and the exploited classes (Erckel 2008, p. 6).
Marx’s concept of class is first based with objectively defined interests which are the results of exploitation and oppression in production: the capitalists or the moneyed class dominating the labourers or the have-nots. To talk of it objectively, people have an interest not to be exploited or oppressed, or under control by others.
And this kind of domination can only be countered by collective action. Individual welfare can be realized by upward social mobility at least by some people but not by many people. It forms a class. Class interests motivate people into forming organized interest groups. Marx’s concept of class is not definite although he clearly defined the terms proletariat and bourgeoisie. (Elster 1986, p. 123)
In understanding human societies, Marx considered the economic conditions and how people acted in answering the necessities of life. Stratification is the result of the power struggles due to scarce food or materials. (Tischler 2007, p. 208) Likewise, in understanding societies, Marx also examined how production was organized, which depended on the forces of production, like raw materials and technology, and who took control of production. (Gasper 2005, p. 24)
Moreover, class divisions always exist in a society at any given time. The state was created by capitalists, the owning class, to defend their interests and to oppress the labourers of production, by means of a legal tool, the police. In the Marxist view, therefore, the state was created to serve the interests of the ruling class which is the minority. (Chatterjee 2010, p. 24)
Members of a class are in a similar economic situation and a class is formed because of the members’ ‘economic determinism’, or the members have the will to advance economically. (Erckel 2008, p. 5)
Historical Materialism
Marx’s concept of history is unique; unique in the sense that he has a pattern for it, although he disregarded progress when talking of history. He would talk of material history. In his writing, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx defined human beings as producers.
Human production is composed of material and social. Men and women met their needs by transforming nature. They organized and needed tools in the process. In production, people cooperate with each other. Through this process, they form the forces of production and the social aspect which is the relation of production. (Callinicos 2011, p. 92)
Marx and Engels formulated the materialist concept of history. Historical materialism states some bold theses about factors of historical change. According to this theory, social development is triggered by progress when social needs are met because of the presence of productive forces, which are the means of production and labour power).
In this process of production, the workforce composed of men and women, enter into social relations. This economic relation is called the economic structure of society, and the economic base is called the mode of production.
This mode of production undergoes change because of internal tensions and contradictions, termed by Hegel as dialectic. The productive forces come into conflict with the rest of the forces of production. The result is a class struggle. It also creates a social revolution. (Derek et al. 2011, p. 1072)
The Communist Manifesto: The Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels divided humanity into two social classes – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The book is a history of how classes struggled and survived. (Marx and Engels 1994, p. 157)
The Communist Manifesto sets the tone that we are living in a class society. History states that this is so. The classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, were hostile to each other. They are related in the sense that one cannot exist without the other: the labourer works for his existence, the capitalist provides the food, but the labourers must work for the capitalist. But their historical relation is that of a class struggle.
By this background, Marx sets the real intention of the Communist Manifesto, that the only way that the proletariat could be saved from poverty, slavery, exploitation and oppression, is to overthrow capitalism, abolish clash society, eliminate the state and establish a communist order through the formation of a communal ownership wherein there is no more class.
The proletarian revolution was what Marx was aspiring for. It would be the end of capitalism and there would be a new world order where private property does not exist. (Rühle, Paul, and Paul 2005, p. 131)
By 1848, Marx publicly announced that they had no country. At a time when Europe was being ruled by kings and nobles, and in the United States there were millions of slaves, Marx had in mind that the bourgeoisie was taking over; taking over because the capitalists will fall by the continuing mass actions of the united working class.
Bourgeoisie originally meant people living in urban cities. In short, Marx called the members of this class ‘the owners of means of capitalist production’ (Randall 1964, p. 25). They are the professionals and owners of small businesses, what we call now entrepreneurs. During those times, small businessmen were capitalists who could oppress people in their own way.
The Communist Manifesto pictured Europe as being in the midst of a social and political upheaval between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This social upheaval was marred by strikes and lockouts, sabotage and bankruptcies, problems in businesses, trade unionism, the ‘class consciousness’ of the proletariat, and so on.
The Romantics of the time would announce that progress was brought about by conflicts of opposing views. It was inevitable because by that development would be brought, although the word development was not yet known at that time.
Dialectic: Hegel’s Romantic thought
Marx thought that what was happening in Europe at the height of the industrial revolution was only a chapter of the universal history. Marx followed Hegel’s Romantic teaching that the struggle was a ‘continuous evolutionary sequence’ of events between opposing classes and that the struggle would produce something higher.
The process of struggle and evolution was termed by Hegel as ‘dialectic’ and it included absolutely everything about God and man (Randall 1964, p. 27). Because of the contradictions of partial truths, which are termed thesis and antithesis, a higher truth (synthesis) can be reached (Erckel 2008, p. 5).
Marx expounds his concept of historic materialism through economic determinism, but this is contradicted by Wilfredo Pareto (as cited in Erckel 2008, p. 5) who argued that there are factors in pursuing a common interest, and these, aside from economic determinism, should not be disregarded.
Marx’s division of social classes pointed only to the workingmen and the middle class, but in contemporary time, we have the upper, middle and lower classes. Although this division is influenced by economic factors, there are other reasons such as education or profession. (Erckel 2008, p. 5)
Continuing class struggle
Hegel’s philosophy included God and spirit in the concept of dialectic. But Marx did not believe in God and spirit, thus he focused on the material things and the material world, the earthly, visible, and tangible. Communism focused on material things; it proposed that private property should not be practiced in society.
The bourgeoisie was worried about losing their property. But why should they be? asked Marx. They stole those properties from the hands of the proletariat, the farmers and labourers. It is they, the bourgeoisie, who oppressed the proletariat and reduced them to the level of a commodity. (Marx, Engels, Tucker 1972, p. 56)
The proletariat should struggle so that in the final countdown, it becomes the most powerful. That is the concept of Hegel’s dialectic, without God and spirit. Hegel’s dialectic is Marx’s scientific way of contemplating the world. (Boudin 2008, p. 20)
According to Marx, the bourgeoisie cry out that the communists want to abolish the people’s freedom when it fact they are the ones who have enslaved the majority in factories and industries? The bourgeoisie cry out that communism wants to abolish the state, culture, religion and belief in God, and even the family, but it is they who have deprived the workers of a state, culture, a true religion and a decent family because of their oppressive character against the workers.
The bourgeoisie has objectified the worker or made him into an object, a commodity, in fact, he is lower than an object. The worker is not concerned of money and profits; he is after his and his family’s survival. He is after food for him and his family. The capitalist member of the bourgeoisie is concerned of profits and more profits. More good and products have to be produced to create more profits; the labourer must work double time. The products and commodities are more important than the workingman.
At the height of the industrialization, labourers were dying in factories. Workers received no benefits and health programs for themselves and their families, and they received very low wages. The workplace was like a dungeon – no safety measures, no ventilation, etc. In the process of class struggle, the proletariat is reduced to an animal, like a horse. Human labour is like animal labour. Man is paid only for the work he has done. He has to eat in order to work again the next day. Man’s humanity is lost. He is now like an animal.
Conclusion
When Marx announced that they had no country, he was expecting a reaction from the motivated working class, the working class and the members of the unionized group. But Marx and Engels over reacted in staging a revolutionary atmosphere for The Communist Manifesto. There was no reaction in the cities.
A Marxian revolution is the result of class struggle, when the oppressed overthrows the oppressor, the capitalists of his time. Karl Marx conceived of political emancipation for the working man whom he said was not yet called human being.
He said a major step ahead is political emancipation wherein the class struggle will move forward, but it is not yet human emancipation. Real human emancipation will be conceived when the alienating and oppressive nature of capitalism are gone and class oppression is no longer possible, and the ‘bourgeois property’ has been eliminated. (Parla and Davison 2004, p. 95)
Marx, Engels and Lenin conceived that a revolution of the working class, after a long history of class struggle, would finally be realized after the global spread of capitalism. Marx was waiting for this, a real revolution of the working class not of the middle class Europe. The spread of capitalism would intensify the horrible and piteous conditions of the majority of human beings. But it did not.
Technology prospered. Information revolution and globalisation spread like wildfire. Capitalism is like a virus that spreads with considerable speed to the four corners of the world. The capitalist soared to the skies with his vast wealth. The ordinary labourer today remains exploited. Karl Marx is long gone and his class struggle continues, for how long, nobody knows.
References
Boudin, L 2008, The theoretical system of Karl Marx, Wildside Press LLC, London.
Callinicos, A 2011, The revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx, Haymarket Books, London.
Chatterjee, A 2010, International relations today: concepts and applications, Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.
Derek, G, Johnston, R, Pratt, G, Wtts, M, & Watmore, S. 2011. The dictionary of human geography, John Wiley & Sons, USA.
Elster, J 1986, An introduction to Karl Marx, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Erckel, S 2008, Marxist and neo-Marxist theories of class, GRIN Verlag, Nordestedt, Germany.
Gasper, P 2005, The communist manifesto: a road map to history’s most important and political document, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Haymarker Books, Chicago.
Lowi, T and Harpham, E 1997, “Political theory and public policy: Marx, Weber, and a republic theory of the state”, in K Monroe (ed.), Contemporary empirical political theory, University of California Press, London.
Marx, K and Engels, F 1994, “The communist manifesto”, in L Simon (ed.), Karl Marx, selected writings, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis.
Marx, K, Engels, F, and Tucker, R 1972, The Marx-Engels reader, University of Michigan, Michigan.
Parla, T and Davison, A 2004, Corporatist ideology in Kemalist Turkey: progress or order? Syracuse University Press, New York.
Randall, F 1964, “Introduction”, in J Katz (ed.), The communist manifesto: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Pocket Books, London.
Rühle, O, Paul, E and Paul, C 2005, Karl Marx: his life and work, Kessinger Publishing, United States of America.
Tischler, H 2007, Introduction to sociology, Thomson Learning Inc., California.
Wood, A 2004, Karl Marx (second edition), Routledge, London.
Karl Marx was born in the town of Trier, Germany in the year 1818. Initially he joined the University of Bonn as a law student. Later he joined the University of Berlin. He is considered to be amongst the individual who had great influence on social thinking during the 19th century. He was considered to play diverse role by contributing to various aspects. This is due to that apart from being a philosopher; he was also characterized by being a historian and a social scientist. His works resulted in a great revolution within the society. Despite all his efforts, his contributions had been ignored during his lifetime by most the scholars. Only in the recent past did his ideas regarding social and political aspects considered important (‘The History Guide’).
One of his contributions with regard to issues in the society was with regard to the theory of alienation. For a long time, there has been a perception that human life is being affected by forces that are impersonal in nature. This made most the people have a perception that the occurrence of these forces is natural in nature and human beings are independent of their occurrence.
In the modern world there are numerous changes that have occurred which are affecting human life. These changes are putting human existence under a pressure making him be helpless despite them being a created by the human being. This means that the effort of man in terms of labor has turned to be a threat. The world today is characterized by increased rate of global warming, insecurity and food shortage despite the fact that man has the power to control the world (Cox para.1).
Through his theory of alienation, Karl Marx sought to illustrate that all the external forces that are experienced within the society are a result of past human activities. Through his alienation theory, Karl Marx was able to illustrate that there is a strong relationship between the past and the modern in that history determines the future (‘The History Guide’).
Karl Marx’s understanding of alienation was multidimensional. This is due to the fact that despite society having an effect on human life, human beings too have the capacity to change the society in which they live consciously. Despite this ability, the capitalistic nature of the society limits this capacity. For instance the type of labor that exists in the society is forced or rather coerced.
He also understood that alienation is deeply related to the material world. To him alienation meant that human beings had lost control precisely with regard to labor. For instance; Marx illustrates how an individual is alienated from the work of his own labor particularly in a capitalist society. This is due to the fact that the creative work of an individual is enjoyed by another. For instance in the case of the farmers, their produce is consumed by other individuals while they are left to be malnourished. According to Karl Marx, alienation with regard to the product of labor is evident from the fact that the workers are separated from the products of their own labor. On the other hand, alienation is evident in that the worker is paid peanuts for the high value that he or she creates. Karl Marks explains that the worker’s labor becomes an alien to his own existence and hence has the capacity to torment his life. This is mainly so in a capitalistic society where those who put the largest effect live in deplorable conditions.
According to Marx, alienation is also evident with regard to the production process. This is due to the fact that individuals have got no power determine what is to be produced or even with regard to the conditions in the working environment. This means that the job environment will have an effect on the workers both mentally and also physically. The ultimate result is that the individual’s level of creativity is greatly reduced since he or she does not have any control (Cox para.7).
This has an effect on human life since individuals develop a perception that life is an activity that is being imposed on him or them. This is due to the fact that since the society is capitalist in nature, the employees are pressurized to have higher results by working for long hours and at a higher rate. This shows that the working process is not under the control of the workers.
According to Marx, alienation is also evident in that the entire production process is conducted by use of modern technology. This means that the workers’ skills are killed since work is divided into small parts along an assembly line. The result is that technology threatens the unity that existed in the execution of tasks through teamwork. the work process is also controlled by just a few individuals at the management level yet it affects all the other workers (Cox para.8).
Marx understood human beings as social beings (Cox Para. 5). This means that collectively individuals can enhance the level of their outcome with regard to a particular activity. This is due to the fact that individuals can effectively plan what is of necessity to them and the society in general. This is however limited by the capitalistic nature of the society which is mostly motivated by the need for higher profits. For instance, technological advancement has resulted in increase in the level of profits but on the other hand environmental pollution has greatly increased. This has resulted in the current climatic change. This clearly illustrates how the society the future depends on the human actions.
One of the greatest criticisms of capitalism by Karl Marx was with regard to it being irrational. According to Karl Marx, the irrationality of the capitalists arises from the fact that they had a perception that in order for there to be an increase in the level of profits from their firms, they had to heavily invest in capital.
According to them the definition of capital included the machinery. The uncontrollable desire for high profits made these firm owners heavily invest in machinery (Udayan p. 16). However the result was high level of losses in the process of the firm operation. This is due to the fact that machines do not directly relate to the level of profits but rather is the quality of labor.
Karl Marx illustrated the criticism for irrationality of capitalism in various ways. A capitalistic economy is characterized by intense competition amongst the producing firms. The competition in the production process is instigated by the need to satisfy the market demand. The end result is that competing firms end up producing and supplying more than the market demand can accommodate. In most cases the goods that these firms produce are not what the customers need (‘Marx’s Criticism of capitalism’ p.1).
Consequently the overproduction of these firms results in workers being laid off which increases the rate of unemployment. The unemployment affects different sectors of the economy resulting in economic depression. If this cycle continues, it culminates into economic recession.
According to the article ‘Marx criticism for capitalism’ capitalists are aimed at increasing the level of their firm’s profit. In order for this to happen, the strategy that most of the firms apply is ensuring that the wages of their employees are very low. This has a negative impact on these employees in that they will not have the financial capacity to buy the goods that the capitalistic firms that they work in. This illustrates a high degree of exploitation that is done to the workers by their employees (p.2).
On the other hand, capitalism has not had a negative effect on the distribution chain of the goods that are produced. In a capitalist economy, most of the firms are owned and entirely controlled by individuals. This means that these individuals do not allow the market forces to operate efficiently. The owners of these firms are the ones who determine what is to be produced and supplied into the market. Due to the powers of the capitalists, they have an influence on the government’s effort to control the market. This makes the government have minimum say with regard to their production and supply decisions. The end result is that the distribution of goods and services becomes very inefficient.
Karl Marx believed that is only a revolution that would contribute to ending the negative impacts of capitalism. This is due to the fact that a revolution would result in a change. Since capitalism results in social inequality, the only option was to replace the inequality created by another inequality. Through this process it would be possible for the process of revolution to be instigated (Udayan p.10).
In order for the workers to change their situation, they had to engage themselves in a revolution directed towards the capitalists due to their exploitative nature. Karl Marx believed that through, this it would be possible for the employees to achieve numerous repercussions that are beneficial to them. For instance the capitalist nature of the economy allows private ownership and control of property. The revolution would result in joint ownership of the key resources. The implication is that the raw materials and other factors of production such as land would be jointly controlled (‘Marx criticism for capitalism’ p.2).
The revolution would also have an impact on the production process by firms with regard to what is to be produced. This would ensure that what is produced is of necessity to the entire society and not derived from the profit motive of the firm owners. This would have a positive effect on the society in general since it would reduce the negative effects of competitive products on the economy.
Karl Marx also perceived that revolution would result in a more effective distribution of the products and services produced in the economy. This means that the economy would be changed from a capitalistic nature to a communist. This would give the government command the control of production and supply of the goods and services. One of the areas where this revolution would help according to Karl Marx is with regard to pricing of the commodities.
In conclusion Karl Marks had great contribution to the society especially with social, political and economic issues. One of his contributions is with regard to alienation theory. He explains how the future is determined by the past human actions. The multidimensional perspective alienation theory helps to illustrate the society has an impact on human life and how the human beings can change the society.
His understanding of alienation is that human beings lack control of most of the things that happen in their life. This is mainly due to the capitalistic nature of the society. He precisely illustrates the lack of control particularly with respect to labor. What the workers produce is not consumed by them but is rather enjoyed by others. The production process also alienates the workers in that they are made to work in a harsh environment. Coercion also characterizes the work environment. This reduces the creativity of the employees.
Alienation is also evident in that the characteristic of human beings as social beings is affected. This intensifies competition resulting in production of goods and services that are not of necessity to the society.
This made Karl Marx greatly criticize capitalism as being irrational. This is due to its negative effects on the society. It made the distribution process to be inefficient since it was controlled by individuals whereas the government had minimal influence. The increase in competition could result in economic recession. Capitalism also results in poor living standards of the workers since they are lowly paid as the firms seek higher profits. It also results in alienation of labor.
It is only through a revolution that the workers could be able to bring change. The revolution would result in effective distribution while the products to be produced are those that are of necessity.
Works cited
Cox, Judy.’ An introduction to Karl Marx theory of alienation’ Britain: International Socialist, 1998. Web.
Kreis, Steven. ‘The history guide: lectures on modern European intellectual history, Karl Marx (1818-1883)’, 2008.
‘Marx’s criticism of capitalism’. Roy, Udayan. ‘Karl Marx’, 2007.
The concept of alienation is one of the most important parts of Karl Marx’s earlier philosophy. In the sociologist’s later works, it was also presented but more as a social phenomenon rather than a philosophical concept. Discussing this theory in his essays, Marx managed to reveal how few the working class had at that time, how capitalists exploited their employees, and how all of that affected society (Jiang 2012). Still, it is a very controversial question whether this theory is relevant or not and whether it can somehow be applied to the modern industry.
The alienation describes the process whereby an individual becomes alien to his surrounding and the world he lives in (Marx 1844). Karl Marx saw this process as a direct consequence of existing in the society with divergent social classes. When an individual becomes a mechanical part of a particular social class, it gradually deprives him of his own humanity. As the basis for his theory of alienation, Marx chooses the capitalist mode of production.
He states that although every worker is individual and autonomous, he is never perceived in that way. Economically, workers just produce objects that do not belong to them but belong to the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the tasks they perform are dictated by the same bourgeoisie. They do not like what they do and do not get any rewards. The more they produce, the less they have, and the less they care about something except basic human needs like eating, drinking or procreating (Marx 1844).
Consequently, workers do not fully comprehend themselves as masters of their own lives and the directors of their own actions, do not think of their lives or destiny, do not try to determine their global objectives, relationships with other people or feelings they have, and so on. Finally, they partly lose the reality because they have to be always concerned about those basic needs. As Marx (1844, para. 9) states, a ‘worker loses his reality to the point of dying of starvation’.
Now, let us take a closer look at Marx’s concept of alienation under capitalism. According to Marx’s theory, alienation manifests itself in workers’ day-to-day activities and actions, and can be divided into four various categories closely connected with each other.
Firstly, that is the alienation of workers from their own work and from the objects they produce. In other words, there is a subject and an object, and those are clearly separated from each other. As Marx (1844, para. 8) writes, ‘the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien’. He calls it the objectification of labour. What is even more important, a man is robbed not only of the product of labour – a worker himself is considered as a commodity. And the more objects a man makes, the less expensive commodity he becomes. The same can be explained from another perspective.
While producing something, a worker puts a part of his own self into a product, and when the product becomes an independent entity, unconnected to a worker, he loses that part of himself as well. According to Marx (1844), that is called the externalization of a worker in his product. He says, ‘the worker places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object’ (Marx 1844, para. 10).
The second manifestation of alienation is the estrangement of a worker from working, in other words, from the very act of producing. A man does not choose the productive activity, he is a part of it only because he is forced to – he has to earn money to live. Hence, the capitalism requirements leave no other choice for workers but to be engaged in alienated labour. The labour is ‘not voluntary but forced’ (Marx 1844, para. 21).
Marx (1844, para. 21) says that such kind of activity is ‘external to the worker’ since he does not feel happy or complete while producing objects, just the opposite, he feels miserable. He does not develop his mind and does not train his body – he gradually destroys the first and the second. Since a man feels miserable when he works, he does not feel free either. Actually, Marx (1844, para. 21) gives a statement that is even more radical, ‘the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself’. He denies himself. With this in mind, it can be concluded that a man can feel free and act freely only during his leisure time while performing his basic needs, which brings us back to the statement provided from the very beginning.
Thirdly, labour not only estranges a man from his products and the tasks that he performs daily – it also makes him alien to his own self by forcing to be engaged in the productive activity he would hardly choose voluntarily. Marx calls it a step away from a species being or a conscious being. One of the major differences between a species being and an animal is activities they are engaged in and the reasons why they do this.
The man’s life activity is influenced and determined by his own will and consciousness. Animals’ activity, on the contrary, is dictated by nature and basic instincts. Animals can produce, for example, nests; but the things they produce and their actions are all aimed to meet only their basic physical need, and nothing more. People can produce whatever they want; they are guided by will, not only their physical needs. However, estranged labour makes people’s activity and their species-life nothing more than ‘a means of his physical existence’, and thereby it deprives them of one of the most important advantages they have over animals (Marx 1844, para. 33). In other words, they deny themselves and retreat from their own species being.
Finally, the fourth and the last manifestation of alienation is that labour deprives workers of normal relationships with other human beings and the community. As Marx (1844, para. 36) says, when an individual ‘confront himself, he also confronts other men’, so the sociologist connects this aspect with the previous one. Indeed, the man’s attitude towards himself, his labour and the products of his labour inevitably affect his attitude and relationships with others.
Since a worker is alienated from the man’s essence as such, he lacks the ability to interact with people. Moreover, he does not need others anymore, and capitalism and its requirements that an individual is forced to meet are responsible for that. First of all, an individual sees himself as a worker, which is why all other people and society are perceived from the same perspective, ‘with the standard and the situation in which he as a worker finds himself’ (Marx 1844, para. 39).
In his Comments on James Mill, as well as in several other subsequent works, Marx (1932) discussed how non-alienated labour would look like. Naturally, this concept is the opposite of alienated labour. It is defined as the conscious life activity that helps individuals to not only meet their basic needs but also develop their potential, collaborate with others and comprehend their species being or humanity (Solomon & Sherman 2008). Hence, non-alienated labour from Marx’s perspective should be something that gives a person the identity, not takes it away. All of this, in its turn, can be achieved if only a worker can control his workplace and the objects he produces. Besides, people should ‘work not in the way domesticated animals or robots work’, they should voluntarily choose their professions (Bramann n.d., para. 7).
Nevertheless, there is a possibility that Marx may have overemphasized the impact that labour has on the workers. Admittedly, a lot of his arguments are justified and make sense, and labour still may be alienated under capitalism to some extent, but perhaps this problem is not so acute as Marx believed. Besides, the sociologist was talking about labour in the context of a particular period of time and certain historical events.
Even though his theory is true for the nineteenth century, it may be absolutely irrelevant for the present-day society. The nineteenth century was characterized by the overexploitation of workers and unacceptable working conditions people existed in. The working days usually lasted for ten or even twelve hours, nobody was concerned about the workplace safety, the salaries were extremely low, women and children were forced to work as much as men to be able to earn for a living (Bramann n.d., para. 14). Evidently, people were deprived of education and any self-development. Hence, the capitalism in that time ‘may have been rather brutal’ (Bramann n.d., para. 14).
However, the times have changed. The salaries are higher, the working conditions are better, employees are provided with numerous benefits. During the nineteenth century, people could hardly afford to buy the objects they produced, and now workers consume and own a lot of material goods, probably, much more than people of the upper classes had at that time.
However, many aspects of Marx’s theory are still relevant nowadays. First of all, while the working conditions, in general, are better, cheap labor and the exploitation of workers still exist invisibly to us, and not only in low-wage countries but even in well-developed ones. Besides, even now, workers are usually treated like machines that are supposed to do repetitive work routinely, and managers have ‘a monopoly of control over the production process’ (Cox n.d., para. 29).
Secondly, the poverty of the working class should be considered from two different perspectives – not only in absolute but also in relative terms (Bramann n.d., para. 16). The money a worker makes, the goods he can buy for that money, the kind of car he can afford and so on – all of these are the aspects seen from the perspective of absolute terms. These conditions without any doubts have significantly developed since the nineteenth century. However, considering the situation in relative terms (how much a regular employee makes if compared with the capital owner’s revenue), it can be concluded that the situation now is even worse that back in those days.
If a manager in the nineteenth century got the revenue that was approximately fifty times higher than the wage of an average employee working for him, nowadays they make hundreds of times more, and the difference between those numbers is constantly increasing. Hence, the central paradigm remains relevant in the present-day society: the rich become richer while ordinary employees are happy to work under more or less good working conditions since it has been even worse in the recent past. In additions, ‘the imbalance of wealth usually translates into an imbalance of political power’, which is why the majority of capitalist countries have a too long way to democracy because their policies are usually determined by wealth and powerful elite rather than by people (Bramann n.d., para. 16).
Finally, Marx’s concept of non-alienated labour is almost unreachable. In modern industry, people do not always work on themselves. Many of them are employed in factories or companies with hierarchical structure and work under the direction of managers and supervisors. Therefore, they can not control all means of production like the building, the land, equipment, materials and so forth. Naturally, they also can not possess the objects they produce. And from Marx’s perspective, that can be considered as alienation of workers from the products of their work.
To conclude, Marx’s concept of alienation is one of the most useful and famous theories the sociologist has come up with. It has influenced many of his works, both the earliest and the later ones, as well as the works of other philosophers of that time. Nevertheless, there is an opinion that Marx may have overemphasized the impact that labour has on the workers and society as such. Especially nowadays, when the working conditions for employees are much better than in the nineteenth century, many of the alienation theory aspects are not relevant anymore. However, many of them still are, and the central paradigm remains unchangeable: the rich become more and more dominant, and the distance between them and the poor is steadily increasing.
After the development of individuation during the period of the Renaissance, the majority of political thinkers developed their theories based on the individual’s relationship with economic factors. Among the most prominent of those thinkers were Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Kant. In the following paper, the way these outstanding political philosophers addressed economical factors in their theories will be discussed.
The development of the concept of individuation became an important point in the evolution of political thought after the Renaissance. Individuation is a complex notion that has its implementation in a variety of sciences including political science, biology, medicine, psychology, and many more. In politics, individuation is characterized by having a row of important elements including:
continual development of a studied unit,
gradual transformation development of a studied unit,
prematurely interrupted the development of a studied unit,
forward-looking development of a studied unit,
scholasticism.
Among them, the most important elements are gradual transformation and the continual process of development as they consider different phenomena subjected to individuation from the most varied angles.
After the development of the concept of individuation in politics, numerous specialists incorporated different factors, shedding light on the progress of social and political relations. Below, the way incorporating economic factors contributed to the advancement of political theories will be discussed on the examples of such great thinkers as Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Kant. Rousseau used economic factors in his social contract theory to explain how the mechanism of political authority was exercised by the state over an individual. In his theory, Rousseau identified that economic factors become the key factors that cause the emersion of the dependence between the state and its citizens (Ebenstein and Ebenstein 220).
Hegel utilized economic factors in his theory of historicism when he explained the nature of the phenomenon of social contrast. He explained that social contrast occurs when as a result of the development of society, individuals accumulate enough capital to acquire more weight among their fellow compatriots. Besides, in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel spoke about his ideas on the distribution of proper balance between political and social institutions by means of regulatory economic factors and expressed his position regarding the matter by stating that economic factors were the most important for organizing people into social groups.
Marx was among the political thinkers, who addressed the impact of economic factors in his theories more actively than the other philosophers. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx explored the problem of primitive accumulation as the main concern regarding the origin of capital. According to him, primitive accumulation of economic riches affected the differences between wealthy ones and non-possessors and resulted in the organization of classes (Ebenstein and Ebenstein 294; 296). Marx made these conclusions examining such significant events from the history of humanity as the discovery of gold and silver in America, the conquest and plunder in India, and the conversion of the population of Africa into potential slaves for a western capitalistic society. He explained these events as primary moments of primitive accumulation (Ebenstein and Ebenstein 302).
In his Utilitarianism, Mill addressed economic factors to explain the origin of capital, social relations among people, and the distribution of authority in states (Ebenstein and Ebenstein 283). Speaking about the economic effectiveness of different social formations such as socialism, capitalism, and communism, Mill defined wealth as all the useful and worthy things, which implicate exchangeable value, and affect the status of an individual in society, proved that equal distribution of wealth would destroy the progress-motivating force of competition, and explained that this economic factor was the crucial element of socialist and communist society that would bring them to a disaster.
Kant applied economic factors to his theory of the development of economic classes. He explained that economical classes develop as a result of accumulating material possessions that are controlled and distributed by guardians, who emerge from the most active leaders in the process of material wealth collecting. This implied that a guardian had to allow the masses to think and act in such a way that would permit gathering the most significant amount of material possessions. According to Kant, throughout history, there have been guardians who have contributed to the enlightenment of the masses, through nurture, motivation, and teaching of new ways of collecting material wealth. Among such outstanding guardians, leading the masses to economical enlightenment were Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar.
In conclusion, it should be stated that after the development of individuation, many political thinkers incorporated its ideas into their theories. Among them were Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Kant, who explained different aspects of the progress of human society from the angle of economic factors. Although all of those thinkers had rather diverse thoughts concerning the effect of economic factors on human society, all of them agree that these factors have been crucial for the transformation of unorganized human communities into unified formations such as cities, states, and coalitions of states.
References
Ebenstein, William, and Alan Ebenstein. Introduction to Political Thinkers, Second Edition, The United States: Wadsworth Publishing, 2001. Print.